


After That Day

by spacego



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Injury Recovery, M/M, PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-20 00:45:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8230394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacego/pseuds/spacego
Summary: Sometimes, a soldier makes it home.Sometimes, the home is broken and nothing is ever right anymore.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The world is much like ours but also a bit like canon--no giant titans, but modern and not-so-modern things mismatched together, just because. I try not to be too confusing, but let me know if it does.
> 
>  
> 
> ***

 

They said that the war would be a short one, and his own deployment would be short.

They said that their particular mission would be a short one. In and out and be back for dinner.

Soldiers had barely gotten in when they were besieged. It was a short mission, that much was true. Almost no one got out alive.

They said a lot of things, and that day he realized that none of those things were true.

_The dead ones are the lucky ones._

* * *

 

The first time he saw Levi again, after That Day, it was during a bright fall day. Every fall color bursting outside of the window, the bluest imaginable sky, the fluffiest white clouds.

He stood there, just inside the door, dumbstruck. Words and intelligence abandoned him at the impossible sight. But truth was truth and here was Levi--thinner, desolate, shattered, but alive.

Erwin quietly, patiently, waited for an invitation to enter that never came. Levi just stared at a point across where his bed was, right on the juncture between the wall and the ceiling. He doubted Levi even knew he was in the room.

The hospice had put Levi in a room at the end of the corridor, with a pretty view outside the window. White stark room with freshly painted walls, new mattress and brand new sheets, fresh-painted bedframe unblemished without a chip in sight.

Clean. Antiseptic in appearance and in smell. Just the way Levi liked it. Only he doubted Levi realized any of it.

The world went by, as usual; the sky turned and steel grey clouds roiled.

The nurse came and told him that visiting hours was over.

At home, he realized he hadn't even greeted the other man. He'd do it tomorrow, he thought, and went to make his dinner.

 

*****************

 

The next time he visited, Levi was asleep. He lingered around just inside the door but didn't dare to step closer. Then he loitered in the corridor for awhile, took a peek and decided to come back another day.

The next seven days were the same. Then he wondered whether Levi was genuinely asleep or was faking it. He didn't know what to ask, so he stayed quiet.

He still hadn't said anything to Levi. He wanted to say at least 'hello'.

 

*****************

 

The guard at the gate checked him in and told him that maybe he should apply for a visitor passcard, if he were going to be regular here. The guard knew about Levi-- _who doesn't?_ \--and everyone knew that it would be a long time before Levi could leave the hospice.

He told the guard he would think about it.

The guard gave him a visitor parking slip, saluted him and lifted the barrier gate.

Erwin added the slip to a growing pile on his empty passenger seat. He didn't have to count to know. There were twelve, today made thirteen.

He didn't go to Levi that day. Hospice Guest Relations gave him the administrative runaround, made him slog through so much paperwork it reminded him of when he still held rank. It was the end of the day when they finally took his photo and slapped a plastic ID card on scarred marble table. He looked nothing like himself in his photograph, he thought.

* * *

 

When someone finally broke the silence, it was Levi, who had just returned from physical therapy. Tired and pale, sweating all over. So tired that he didn't even ask for a wash or a change of clothes, climbing straight out of the wheelchair into the bed.

Levi didn't say hello, didn't offer a how are you, so Erwin didn't too.

The first word Levi said was 'sorry'. And the words that followed were apologies. It was as if he had rehearsed it a million times in his head, and perhaps he did.

He apologized for being late--more than a year that was almost two years. He apologized for fucking up Erwin's plans and Mike's future. He apologized because he couldn't bring Mike home, not even Mike's dogtags, or Mike's engagement ring--the same ring that Levi had helped Erwin buy that one summer morning because Erwin got an epiphany, the same ring whose twin lay quiet in a box under Erwin's bed.

He apologized for not saving Mike for Erwin. He apologized that he was alive when Mike was not.

Levi's voice remained low throughout, his eyes stayed empty and dry. Levi had his hands in his lap, fingers wrung tightly they turned white. His head was tilted awkwardly, angled on a stack of pillows so he could look at the neon light on the ceiling. He continued his apology like a litany of prayers. He used the words _sorry_ and _regret_ like punctuation marks, but never asked if Erwin could forgive him.

Erwin stood helplessly, just inside the door, trying to his find his voice so he could say words like _it's okay_ , or _don't worry_ , or even _I forgive you_. But every time he opened his mouth, a memory of Mike came to his mind's eye and it stilled his voice. Mike smiling, Mike laughing. He could feel the ghost of Mike's hands on his shoulders, Mike's fingers entwined with his. Mike who still lived in his heart, but whom he hadn't thought about so often anymore. Until now. He let out a strangled sob. Now all he could think of was Mike.

The world went by, quietly and calmly. Levi had stopped talking, now merely staring at the leafless tree outside his window.

The nurse came in right at that moment, as if she had been standing outside the door all this time, and perhaps she had. She led him out of the room and made him sit down on a hard chair in the corridor, perhaps with more force than necessary, then disappeared back into Levi's room.

When Erwin was in his car again--the car he bought together with Mike a few weeks before That Day--he caught a sight of himself in the rear mirror and couldn't recognize the red-eyed disheveled man in it.

He still hadn't said anything to Levi. Now he doubted he ever would.

 

******************

 

He didn't leave his house for the next one week. He ate out of ramen cups and tuna cans, and drank out of a beer cans. He online-shopped more ramen and more beer, when he ran out of them. When he wasn't holed up in a room that had been his and Mike's, with memories scattered around him on the floor in a very untidy way. In a way that would inspire snide remarks from Levi.

Levi who was alive--broken but alive--when Mike was dead.

When he ran out of beer in the middle of the night, he started on the scotch--two bottles that he had given to Mike for his last two birthdays. The first empty bottle went into the recycling box, barely. The second, he threw against the wall. He now had a dent in the wall, but the bottle didn't shatter. It fell with a dull thud on thick carpeting--Mike hated the carpet's garish pattern, swore to replace it, but now would never do.

He slept where he fell then woke up with a pickax in his head, the sun in his eyes, and a realization that he actually resented Levi for coming back when Mike did not.

He resented the fact so much that it made him see white, then black, then red.

He destroyed everything in his living room and only stopped when he broke the side table that Hange had given him as a housewarming gift.

The same Hange who listened to his confession patiently, but then cursed him out, cutting and clear, through the crappy connection of his video call. Who looked like an angry avenging angel on the cracked screen of his cell phone. Who told him to set up an appointment with a psychologist or a psychiatrist or both. Who told him not to show his face around the hospice anymore, at least until he got himself sorted out.

The same Hange who thanked god that Erwin didn't die of blood loss, alcohol poisoning or MSG overdose, before hanging up.

 

******************

 

Veteran Services assigned him a counselor, and State Med-Insure paid for his psychologist.

They gave him several appointment dates to start with, and he circled out his calendar accordingly--it was a gag gift from some kids at the Academy where he helped with PT once in a while. It had been Mike's gig, which he filled when Mike's not around.

He never missed an appointment, because he's dutiful like that. Even when he didn't say anything the first few meetings, because he didn't even know himself.

His counselor was very old. If she were a sequoia, she would be the tallest, but as it was, she had a nasty stoop. His psychologist was kind, but he supposed all psychologists were the same. Nobody he had to meet wore white coats, only tasteful fashionable clothing with enough color and texture to make them conversation pieces.

He video-called Hange once in a while. Short calls where they talked about little things, skirting around the subject of his mental health in favor of the weather outside his window. Sometimes they talked about the pretty chef on the cooking channel he had on mute, praising the pretty plate of food that came into view on his cracked television screen--the television that he had moved from his bachelor apartment in the city that he never stayed in but paid for anyway. He still had it, still paid for it. He wondered why he did.

He went to the gym sometimes; self-medicated before bed all the time.

He had gone through all the bottles of wine that had been given to him and Mike at one time or another. Now he was chummy with the corner-store clerk, who told him to ease up on his drinking, even though Erwin's purchases could easily put her son through college. She sent him home with food sometimes, leftovers from the diner where her husband worked. To soak up all those alcohol, she thankfully didn't say, though her bright concerned gaze followed him out of the door.

The day his psychologist urged him to consider joining Alcoholic Anonymous, the first snow fell.

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

"I don't need an AA appointment," Erwin told his counselor.

"Do you not? Truly?" the counselor asked, and Erwin hated how those warm brown eyes held infinite wisdom. He couldn't quite remember the woman's name, but he called her Old Sequoia in his head, and Ma'am to her face. He should remember, but he couldn't. He hadn't been able to remember anything lately.

"I never have a drinking problem," he said.

"And yet, within the past how many weeks, you have consumed more than you did your whole life," she said kindly.

Erwin could tell her just how many weeks, days, minutes. Even months. Apparently he's making up for lost time.

"I can stop any time." He thought this might be a lie. "Anyway, isn't AA only for chronic drinkers?"

"Not really, they had meetings that are for anyone. Just so you can speak to people with...," she did mean to sigh, but she did. "So you can nip it at the bud, so to speak. You do not wait until a sore turns into a gangrene, Mr. Smith."

"But..." He knew it was just a play. A ruse for him to interact with people other than his counselor, his psychologist, and on occasions, his cornerstore clerk and even more rarely, Hange. An excuse so he had to go somewhere other than the Center, the Clinic, and the cornerstore. His online shopping habits had become worse as well. He vaguely realized that he's slowly turning into a shut-in, but he didn't see why it's such a bad thing. Or maybe he did but didn't care? He hadn't been able to care much about anything lately.

"Just think about it, please," she said softly, knowing that the session was at an end.

 

************

  

He bumped into a familiar face in the corridor. "Armin?"

"Wha.... oh, Sir?"

The corridor was dim, like the Center was trying to conserve electricity, so Erwin couldn't see the other man's face. But the tiredness in Armin's voice told him almost everything. Erwin might be a drunk these days--according to everyone--but he still had his perceptiveness.

"Drop the Sir, Armin."

"Okay." It was a hesitant reply.

They made their way out of the building in silence, not knowing what was safe to talk about these days. Erwin remembered a time when they could converse more freely, be more like friends, even with the barriers of rank between them. Now, without the social crutch that was the military, they're like strangers.

In the foyer, Armin stopped. Erwin was a few steps ahead when he realized he was walking out alone. Turning around, he hesitated, just inside the arc of light filtering through glass doors.

Armin was already seated on one of those hard plastic chairs scattered with no rhyme or reason in the wide foyer space. Head down, hand fiddling with his cellphone, typing something out slowly. A message perhaps.

"Do you need a lift?" Erwin asked hesitantly, shifting from foot to foot.

"Mikasa and Eren are coming to pick me up." There's no brightness in his voice. Thin, and reedy, he didn't feel like an Armin at all to him.

"You okay, alone?"

The foyer was empty. Even the reception window was abandoned. Though he could hear some talking and polite laughing somewhere beyond.

It wasn't an entirely sincere offer, but it was the polite thing to do. And Erwin was nothing but polite even if his heart wasn't into it. Yet it wasn't so long ago that he would've enjoyed company, to gladly be around people and keep them company. Nowadays, he preferred to not talk to anyone. The thought of interacting with anyone made him uneasy. Even Armin, who was someone he knew and respected. He wondered why.

Meanwhile, Armin had not answered him. Perhaps he hadn't heard. Erwin took a long breath, and was about to ask again, when...

"It's okay really, they won't be long," Armin replied distractedly. There's faint noise coming out of the cellphone, maybe a game app, or maybe a streaming video, Erwin couldn't tell from where he's standing.

"Okay," Erwin said, not making a move to leave either. He could wait a while. They didn't have to talk. He could just stand by the door where he could keep an eye on both Armin and the long driveway outside.

The sun was blinding. He squinted and waited for his eyes to adjust. There was a breeze, and he pulled his jacket collar tighter around his neck.

He leaned against the wall next to the door, in such a way that the automatic censor kept the door from sliding close. There was only one cigarette left in the box. He shook it put and tapped it nervously against his thigh.

The wind was brisk, and the winter's day was a bright enough that he could fool himself it was already spring. In the small show garden in front of the building was a peacock, waving his magnificent tail at a disinterested peahen.

He didn't know how long it was, but Armin continued to tap-tap-tap on his cellphone, while he tap-tap-tapped his thigh with his cigarette watching two birds courting. Finally, a small car spluttered into view, cherry red and dusty. Two dark heads seen from the windshield. The one with longer hair and solemn features waved a hand outside the passenger window.

He gave a small wave back, a minute flick of a wrist. He tried to smile but he knew it came out all wrong.

The car stopped awkwardly, because Eren was never going to be the best driver despite the many defensive driving courses he was enrolled into. But Mikasa, the better driver of the trio, looked pale and spent on the passenger seat. They drove away soon enough, surprisingly they did not exchange any words. Merely small stilted gestures, nods, and wavering smiles.

 

************

 

It was a week later when he met Armin again, in the same dimly lit corridor. He realized he didn't know why Armin was at the Recovery Center, walking out of a room with a board that had "Counseling Room 4" written across it. Some small voice in his head told him he should know, but at the moment, he was drawing a blank.

This time they merely nodded and exchanged even less words. This time Mikasa was driving and Eren was the one with thunderclouds on his brows, highly-strung and quiet on the passenger seat. Armin climbed into the back seat, and they disappeared out of the gate.

Erwin threw his unsmoked cigarette into an open bin, followed by a crumpled up cigarette box, and a torn-in-half phone number of the AA coordinator.

 

* * *

  

Soon, it was his last meeting with his counselor before the holidays. The days were getting shorter and the temperature colder. _Time flies when you're not doing anything._ His counselor was reading through a report Erwin's psychologist had forwarded, from the meeting two days before. He hadn't been in the best of moods, his fuse shorter than ever, it seemed. He was sure his psychologist must be writing all sorts of verdicts about him. "Don't worry. No one's holding it against you. Holidays make everybody antsy," his counselor told him conspiringly.

Today, the counselor had her hair in a bun, her steel grey hair was wrapped up under a paisley scarf. She was dressed nicer than usual. Erwin wanted to ask whether the lady had a date, but kept quiet anyway.

She gave him a slip of paper with a phone number he had already memorized; he told her he didn't need the AA unless it was the kind that would tow his car when he needed them.

Fifteen minutes later, he stepped out and found Armin already in the foyer, head down, fingers typing quickly across his cellphone screen. They exchanged how-do-you-dos, and that was that. He went straight out and to the parking lot.

He was about to climb into his car, when the trio's cherry red sedan came up into the empty space next to him. The back passenger window was rolled down, and Mikasa leaned out of it.

"Sir," she hesitated. He frowned and told her not to call him Sir. "Uh, well. Okay," she ventured. "We just want... er... Do you want to join us for Christm..." A sharp hiss and a _Mikasa!_ came from the front seats. "I mean... for New Year Eve's dinner? Nothing fancy. Just the old gang, at our place."

Erwin pretended he didn't hear the slip of tongue, pretended he didn't know the reason why.

When he didn't reply quick enough, Mikasa visibly deflated. But she had been one of the most determined people he'd ever known. "So, uh... may I send you the address to our place? So you can come if you're up to it on the day..."

Because Erwin was polite, he gave her his new number. Mikasa, Eren, and Armin wished him goodbye, with different levels of enthusiasm, and Erwin was left to wonder what a dinner with 'the old gang' might do to him. He stood on the parking lot asphalt staring at the neat rows of gleaming cars, the trees on the perimeter. He wanted very badly to turn back and ask Old Sequoia what he should do, but he remembered that she was dressed like she was about to go on a date.

 

* * *

 

He waited for the traffic light to turn green. It felt like he had been waiting for a long time.

A dull grey car, buffed to a very high sheen that its chromes gleamed in faint winter sun, pulled beside him. He stole a glance, in a way that he hoped wouldn't look impolite.

An old man drove it. Short statured, and grey like the car, deeply wrinkled, with an eye-patch over one eye. He had a cauliflower ear, and a wicked scar slashing diagonally from the ear down to the other side of the neck. Three fingers were missing from one hand. Next to him was a woman, equally old, hair done up in a bun under a paisley scarf. With all the space and so many closed windows, Erwin could not hear what was being said.

They were laughing, acting as though they owned the world and everyone else was just visiting. And in a sense, that's what Erwin felt these days. Like he was an unwelcome guest in his own skin.

The light turned orange, then green. They went on their way. The old man wound his free hand around the back of the passenger seat, fingers brushing against one silk-covered shoulder. Old Sequoia kissed the man's cheek.

And that was all Erwin could bear to see.

 

* * *

  

_"Mike..."_

_"Hmm?"_

_"Are you serious? About the Hawaiian shirts?"_

_"For the wedding? Sure. No joke."_

_"What about paisley, instead? They are patterns too."_

_"What's wrong with Hawaiian shirts?"_

_"....."_

_"....."_

_"After this mission...."_

_"Get honorably discharged. Maybe get some goodbye medals. Get hitched. In Hawaiian shirts."_

_"That's your plan?"_

_"Yep."_

_"Better stay alive, then."_

_"Sure."_

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

_"Better stay alive, then."_

_"Sure."_

. . .

"Ah shit you fucking liar," Levi groaned as he jerked awake, breathless, and a sting in his eyes.

It was still dark; it hadn't been long since he fell asleep. If you could call it sleep. "Mike ya bastard," he whispered brokenly.

How odd, he thought, that Mike's death should affect him more than the rest. He wondered why he dreamed about Mike so often. About Mike's last days, when desperation was oily on his skin, and despair smelled like decay coating the inside of his nose. _Mike._ Who was always dying in his dreams--dying, dying, dead. dying, dying, dead--it's like groundhog day in his head. _You've got to be kidding me. I'm sorry. Give me a break_ , he pleaded sometimes. Not today. He scrubbed at his face, felt the scars on his palm scrape against the skin of his nose.

The deepest one went from the fleshy part above the wrist to just below the middle finger. A long straight line that overlapped with the shorter more jagged one he was born with.

 _Now you'll have a longer life line_ , the bastard had said once, warm hands wrapping bandages around his. Who'd believe some palmistry mumbo-jumbo anyway?

_I don't fucking need it._

 

* * *

 

"Levi?"

He forgot he had someone in the room with him. He turned his head toward where the couch was, against the far wall, in the shadows.

There's only light from the corridor, seeping underneath the door. He groped at the cord that would turn the overhead light on.

One pull at the cord meant dim yellow, and slightly flickering. He blinked rapidly.

"Hange?" He asked, as his friend's face swam into his vision. "You're still here."

Hange shifted on the couch, thin blanket that she managed to wrangle from the duty nurse slid off to pool in her lap. "Don't feel like going home," she shrugged. The home that she had shared with Moblit, and now felt like a museum of memories. It didn't feel like home anymore.

"Stay all you want," Levi said, fiddling with the buttons that controlled his bed. Tiny gears whirred somewhere under the mattress as the upper half of the contraption lifted, so he could sit up. "Couch can't be all that comfortable, though."

"'S fine," she said. "Bad dreams again?"

"That's all they are these days," Levi sighed. "My fault."

"Mike's not your fault," Hange retorted, perhaps a little bit sharper than she intended. "Just like the others aren't your fault. You tried to bring them home Levi."

"Sure as hell feels like it's my fault." It's been ages. It felt like ages anyway. It still hurt, to be the one left alive.

He still remembered how Erwin lurked around the inside of his sickroom door for weeks on end, when he first came back. Quiet and tall, like an overbearing shadow. Like a shadow who didn't dare speak, who waited patiently for Levi to give him good news. Or at least give Erwin something to keep hope alive. Should Levi had lied?

So maybe not lying. He wondered how tactful he should've been. Maybe he should've said something first before breaking the news. He couldn't remember if he even said hello, or some pleasantries like that. They must've taught him a bit of tact way back in officer school, way back when they're still green, stupid, and thought themselves immortal. Nothing had stuck, though. Nothing that mattered anyway. Or so he thought.

Maybe something should've stuck. Maybe if he had a bit of tact, had a way with words, then things would've be different. Maybe he should've broken the news gently? But what's gentle?

Levi was always a rip the band-aid kind of person. Gently or not-so-gently, nothing would change the fact that people had died and he had failed. He had started with a "sorry", then he had apologized with every sentence. Surely that's tactful enough?

"He....Erwin didn't blame you. Never... doesn't blame you," Hange broke through his musing.

To Levi's ears, she sounded unsure, even though she had been saying the same words for months. Levi laughed until his sides hurt, until the metals in his bones vibrated. "No, he's just giving me the coldest shoulder this side of Antarctica."

Deep inside his heart he knew Erwin had every right to feel sad, to feel anger, to feel resentment. To feel all of the human emotions that came with the end of hope and the beginning of mourning. But Levi hadn't been ready to be witness to Erwin's patented grief. What he had seen back then, what he had heard, and the snippet of news he learned over the months from friends. Things he learned when he listened to unspoken words and read between the lines. Maybe he'd been looking at Erwin as this paragon of strength and unwavering spirit, that it surprised the hell out of him to see that even strong men faltered. Maybe he's angry about that too. At Erwin for faltering. At himself, for causing it.

"He's struggling, Levi." _Give him time._

"Fuck that, Hanj'. We _all_ are!" He slapped his hand on the bed, as hard as he could, and it jarred him up his arm and to his neck, he felt the pain in his teeth. "You, Eren, Mikasa, Armin... even Nanaba. We all are! Everyone in this whole fucking building is struggling! If not one thing, then it's another!" Hange was quiet, the room was too quiet. Only his mind was a cacophony of noise. A lot of things didn't make sense. A lot of things he didn't mean. "I guess you blame me, too."

It's Hange's turn to curse, fingers curled into fists, pounding the back of the couch. His words had caught her by surprise, it had been unexpected and damn if it didn't almost broke something inside her. She stared at him, stared at the wall. Stared into her soul and didn't like what she saw.

"That's not fair, Levi," she said after a while. Blankets on the floor, over some open textbooks, next to the eye-patch she only wore when she wanted to avoid questions and stares from curious, well-meaning strangers.

"Tell me that you don't wish you made a different choice back then," Levi said between gritted teeth.

 

************

 

It had been a normal day. It had been raining hard, a bit windy, but normal nevertheless. Hange enjoying Moblit's company watching Titanic reruns and groping under the covers, cozy and toasty. The Titanic was sinking in surround stereo and vivid technicolors, her pager went off.

It was a message from the Hospice--a generic message sent out to all anesthesiologists. She didn't have to reply, and she hadn't intended to, if not for her cellphone beeping as well. Moblit had gotten to the phone first, and read off the short message in it.

"It's Levi," Moblit said. "He hurt himself in therapy."

"Hurt himself bad enough to require surgery? How is that even possible?" Hange wondered, already up from the bed and halfway to her closet. _The boy's always pushing himself too hard_. She shook her head in fond amusement.

"We'll ask him once you patch him up, like always." Moblit was already in his jacket, car keys in hand. "I'll drive you."

"Runt better be ready for an earful," she grinned, already texting the attending surgeon for more info. "He better learn the meaning of 'taking it easy' once in a while."

The television was still on. The door closed with a quiet snick.

 _You jump, I jump_ , Rose told Jack.

 _I'll be with you the whole time_ , Jack said earnestly, but no one's watching.

Halfway between the house and the hospice, a drunk driver lost control of his SUV. The driver died on the scene, Moblit was DOA, and Hange lost one eye and the feeling in her legs.

 

************

 

"I'd have done _nothing_ differently. We..." She heaved noisily. "Mobl... Mob..." Breathe in. Hold. Then Out. _"Moblit_ would tell you the same thing. We'd still come, even if it's raining blood instead of cats and dogs."

While Hange was still an employee of the hospice on paper, she's now spending more time in therapy than in the OR. Relearning how to coordinate her hands with (what used to be) her one non-dominant eye. How to navigate the corridors in wheelchairs, how to reach the tools of her trade and how to monitor surgery patients at only half the height. Cold days made the scar over her dead eye itchy. It's still healing, pink and tender and itchy.

Her backside looked bad now, with all the sores from sitting too long, no matter how much anti-chafing gel she slathered herself in. Sometimes, she let Levi call her a slug. Lower back pain, and muscle cramps. Today was the first time she felt her body behave. Just in time for Christmas, she thought.

But Moblit, poor Moblit. Survived three tours of duty and two separate UVIED incidents that blew cars up into the air like confetti, only to die at home because some asshole fratboy thought it funny to rob a liquor store, steal a car, and wreck people's lives. As soon as she could walk again, she'd piss on that fucking boy's grave.

"Do I wish everything could be different? Sure," Hange said tiredly. Smiling Moblit, doting Moblit. She should put up their house for sale. "I wish it every day."

"Hange..."

"But you're my patient," Hange bit out, cutting off whatever self-pitying platitude _this_  Levi would try and offer her. "You're my friend, Levi," her voice wavered, but she never cried. "You're _our_ friend."

"If..." Levi hesitated, searched her face in between flickering shadows. "If I didn't overdo PT and didn't rebreak my leg, maybe you didn't have to come," Levi said. He'd said it enough times at counseling. He'd say it once to Hange.

"Now you'll never overdo anything again," Hange said with finality.

"Never again." Because his overzealous attempt to get better had cost him Moblit and Hange's life. "Everything in moderation," he said. He almost died, too, because the replacement anesthesiologist miscalculated a dose, something Hange would never do. Something Hange shouldn't have to do if Levi wasn't so wrapped up in his own self-appointed mission to get better sooner, faster.

"Shopping tomorrow?" Hange asked, because she's the best at moving on. She's the best of them all.

"If the doc in charge doesn't change his mind about letting me out."

"Sure he'll let you out." Even if they had to tag-team the doctor into submission.

It's Christmas Eve tomorrow. He had shopping to do in the morning. Then he'd cook while Hange go to her therapy and counseling. The hospice had given him a studio room with an open stove, once they'd been convinced he wouldn't burn the building down. Then it's dinner with friends. Their first time together as a group after that shitty mission had gone to all hell.

He'd been back home--what a curious word--for a total of four, maybe five, months now. Not even half a year, but apparently more than enough time for him to shit on what remained of all his friends' lives.

 _It's not your fault_ , Everyone told him. He wished he could believe them. Words were always easy. Feelings were hard. He couldn't tell how sincere their words were. He said those same words to himself sometimes, when the night was too quiet or the day too overwhelming. He would feel his way around each syllable, as though they held secrets to life and forgiveness. Some days, he thought he believed them. One day, he would really believe them. Though that day won't be today.


	4. Chapter 4

New Year's Dinner was awkward and stilted. So many topics had become landmines now. Funny how changing one letter, from MIA to KIA, changed _everything_. Funny how the return of a mutual friend managed to pull them further apart, when it was supposed to bring them together.

A year ago, they had come together just like this, full of hope. Worried and in agony, but at least they had hope.

This year, what was supposed to be a celebratory dinner had become something of a group non-therapy session. They're still in agony, they're more stilted, and what little hope seemed to have fled.

It's not for the lack of trying. Noone wanted this feeling, everyone wanted it to pass. Yet they embraced it anyway, nurtured it anyway, like some masochistic experiment. Sometimes it's easier to hang on to the pain, blame someone else for a while.

Erwin tried very hard not to look visibly relieved when dinner was over.

 

************

 

The two of them loitered around on the sidewalk, up the street from Eren, Armin, and Mikasa's shared residence, trying not to huddle deeper into their respective coats, gloves, and scarves. The wind was brisk, and it was a moonless night.

"You don't have to wait up with me," Hange said, fidgeting in her wheelchair. Erwin's car was just three wheel-turns away.

"I know you're capable of fending for yourself but..."

"No, _really_ ," Hange cut him short, her eyes never leaving the phone's message screen. "You really don't have to."

"May I drive you home?" Always worrying, always trying to look out for his people. Where it had been welcomed as comforting before, it felt overbearing, smothering now.

"It's fine. Don't worry. I know the cab driver."

"I don't have to be anywhere, so it's no hassle for me," Erwin didn't know why driving Hange back to her place had become so important for him.

"You don't have..."

"I insist."

Hange looked up, and couldn't see Erwin's face properly through the dark shadows cast streetlights behind him She didn't need his pity. She'd gotten enough of it from everybody else.

"I'm staying with Levi now," she said. Hange had guessed that the mere mention of Levi might deter the man's persistence somewhat. She knew that the man was not yet ready to meet Levi, to think about Levi.

And yet, she was nowhere near ready to see him physically recoil, as though a two-by-four had hit him. She wanted to say something, but a familiar set of headlights turned the corner.

 

************

 

Erwin stood aside, on the proverbial sidelines, watched the cab driver deftly maneuvered Hange into the car, behind the driver seat. She didn't lie; the cab driver knew exactly what he was doing.

"I'm sorry," Erwin said when Hange tried to pull the car door close.

"It's not me you have to apologize to," Hange said. In a different lifetime, she would've wave it off, laugh it off as if it was nothing. In another life, she would try to see, to understand, where Erwin was coming from. That was so many lifetimes ago.

They exchanged no more words. The cab driver nodded slightly at him, and the red glow of the cab's tail lights was brighter than anything Erwin had ever seen.

 

* * *

 

These days, Erwin liked to drive around the quiet neighborhood whenever he felt uneasy. Pretending he was on guard duty, securing the perimeter. He knew it to be a joke, a delusion. He wasn't a vigilante do-gooder. But a drive always cleared his head.

Too bad the journey back to the house from dinner didn't take long at all. It gave him no time at all to cool his head.

It was dark. He had forgotten even to leave the porch light on. His fore finger hovered over the light switch. But he decided to forego it anyway.

In the darkness, it was easy for his overcharged mind to remember everything that happened during dinner. To remember every gesture each of them made, to remember the placement of things, or the absence of other things. Most of all, he remembered tense atmosphere and forced laughter.

His mind knew that what they had shown him wasn't personal. It was because everybody was still trying to adjust to life without ranks, without rigid codes of conduct to lean back upon as a conversation crutch. It was because nobody knew how to adjust to a world that echoed deafeningly with the finality of a loss; to no longer have certain people around as conversational foils. They had yet to find a way to function again without the other, important parts of their souls.

His mind knew that none of the uneasiness, the heaviness in the air, the bechamel sauce that felt like liquid lead in his stomach, were anything personal. But he felt like it was his fault anyway. He had been their CO for the longest of time, they looked up to him for guidance, and now he could offer none. He felt like he had failed them.

Like any sane person, he cracked open a bottle.

 

* * *

 

The cab driver was always nice to her, courteous and never said a word out of line. He was stocky, hardy, and unassuming. In his own words, he "came from a long line of foot soldiers," none of whom were brilliant enough, or stood out enough, to have the history books remember them by name.

As a dutiful son, he had taken up the 'family trade' and had gone through some Basic Training. He had done better than expected, a solid placement, and had been on the fast track to... somewhere, when one day he just stopped. His family had reacted badly at first, then indifferently later on. Some days, he felt invisible. He traded guts and glory for Midtown rush hour traffic.

His cellphone number was on a corkboard next to the double sliding doors of the local Veteran Services office. Right under the number of a laundry service and a petsitter's. Any day of the week, any time of the day. He'd pick you up from anywhere and send you to any place.

And Hange was one of his favorite people to ferry around. He liked the way she talked about science and medicine, about saving people, one breath at a time. Before her, he never had any interest in anything at all, and especially not science.

Earlier that day, he had received a message from Hange, asking if he could pick her up at an address he already knew well. Her friends lived in a house at the end of that street. Whenever he came to pick her up from there, she would always be in good spirits. Except today.

He should've heeded the warning bells in his head. He should've known something was not quite right when she asked to be picked up at the top of the street, not from the front of her friend's house.

When he arrived, he noticed her bowed body, almost slumped into her wheelchair seat. She didn't look drunk, but she had a pinched look to her, tension and anxiety radiating out from every pore. There was a man with her--very tall, blonde, and pensive, with a stormy brow. The man only had one arm and carried himself like he was career military. The humble cab driver wondered what had happened to the one-armed man, but soon decided that it was none of his business.

He greeted her cordially, but she only answered with a grunt. So he quietly situated her into the space behind the driver's seat, where there was an empty space big enough for a wheelchair. All the other times, he would've helped her climb into the passenger seat, and fold up her chair in the baggage bin.

All the other times, he had waited patiently--car engine running, gear on neutral--while she traded good-natured ribbing with her friends.

This time, he drove off quickly. She didn't really say "let's get the hell out of here," but he got the memo anyway. It felt odd to drive these familiar roads--she visited here at least five times a year, that he knew of--in such uncharacteristic silence. Usually, she would've chatted up a storm, so bright and so full of ideas, talking in a way he couldn't get a word in edgewise.

He had been meaning to ask about an entry-level science course he had seen online. But figured it would be better to keep his mouth shut this time. He could always ask later.

It would be a long time before he saw her again.

 

* * *

 

Levi heard the key being slotted in, little tumblers shifting and turning, handle pushed down and door pushed in. He knew from the shuffling of things, the grating noise of wheel against linoleum, that dinner hadn't gone well at all for Hange.

There was already a half-formed apology on his tongue, and he bit it down viciously. Hange would only get more upset. What did she say before? _Don't apologize for something you can't control_. And it's true; he couldn't possibly control his friends' feelings. He only ruined them.

So he settled for "Hey Hange," and he kept it light. He could do considerate, he reminded himself.

"Hey Levi," Hange called back, from somewhere in their small open kitchen, possibly with her head inside the fridge. "There's some of Armin's meatloaf in the fridge, okay?"

"Was it a good dinner?" he asked even though he thought he knew the answer. He kept his eyes glued to the laptop screen in front of him.

The silence answered him in ways that Hange never would.

"Eren's chili was atrocious. That boy has no concept of spices, I'll have you know," she answered after a while, moving out of the kitchen with a bar of chocolate on her lap. "I'm going to have the runs."

It was true enough. They'd all vowed to keep Eren chained in the wine cellar the next time he even breathed in the direction of the stove.

"I'll set up a cot up in the toilet, how 'bout it? No way I'm going to cart you back and forth a dozen of times at night" Levi asked, lifting his head to look at her, finally. She was trying to keep things light and low-stress, and he owed it to her to try and return her courtesy. _Levity_ , he could do it. "Do you need Imodium?" he asked, genuinely concerned.

"I'm hoping it won't come to that," she grimaced as she moved.

Sometime between Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas morning, a sofa bed had appeared. Levi had been sneaky behind her back, and traded his couch with a sofa-bed. The thing had a lever, and it was very fancy. With one small pull, the two-seater unfurled like a mechanical flower into a comfortable bed. It took up more space than the couch, and when extended, one end of it would touch one end of Levi's bed. It made the studio apartment smaller, and wheelchair navigation a downright adventure. But tight spaces was cozy and comforting. "I'd hate to soil the new bed."

"Not to mention the cleaning that _I'm_  going to be doing," Levi said, powering down his laptop and setting it aside.

"What were you doing?" Hange asked instead, eyeing the laptop suspiciously. Levi had been on that thing since she left earlier in the day. She leaned back on her bed, tearing into the silver wrapper of a stiff bar of chocolate.

"Writing a novel," Levi answered, hobbling a short distance to the washroom. As long as he had his leg braces on, he could cross short distances without his crutches, or god-forbid, a walking frame.

"Pull the other one," Hange spoke around two bites of chocolate, listening to Levi's dental hygiene ritual. "Seriously, what is it? Do I need to start worrying?"

 

************

 

Hange had nodded off, chocolate melting in her lax hands, when Levi emerged from the washroom with a basin, a large cup of water, and Hange's toothbrush and toothpaste.

He shook her awake, and was surprised to see how lethargic her responses were. The pallor of her face was worse now. The chocolate in her hands were sticky, and randomly bitten. He threw it in a bin and hoped the ants wouldn't stumble upon it. He rolled onto his bed, put his back toward Hange, and tried not to listen with gross fascination to Hange brushing her teeth on the bed, gurgling noisily, and spitting into the basin.

"It's just something I needed to do," Levi said to the wall on one side of his bed, answering her previous question. Sooner or later Hange would find out about it, anyway.

"You're not going to do something stupid, are you?"

"Who, me?" Levi had never done a stupid thing in his life. Ill-advised, reckless, rash, impetuous, reactionary, but never stupid.

"Exactly." The master light switch was above Hange's head. "Don't do anything stupid alone, okay."

It was just a statement, a benign statement that she emphasized by switching off the lights. Dark fell over them, and after two blinks, they adjusted to the scant light from the street lamp outside their window.

Levi laid awake, tracing one surgery scar on the upper thigh that had become a comfort tool for him. _Once more then, into the fray_.

He watched the first sunrise of the new year from between the blinds.

 

 

 


End file.
